


Of course parts of me are yours (they're the bits that say strong when I fall)

by Tactical_Shrub



Category: RWBY
Genre: Abuse referenced but not described, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, mentioned still birth, references to Adam Taurus, still birth/preeclamsia mentioned briefly but not described
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 16:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18167585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tactical_Shrub/pseuds/Tactical_Shrub
Summary: "When Blake gets her first serious boyfriend Sun gets sympathetic pats on the shoulder and promises she'll come around eventually. He hopes so, but not for the reasons people think."Blake is is soulmate, there's no doubt about that in Sun's mind, and if you ask Blake she'll give you the exact same answer. But the idea of kissing her, of dating her, leaves him fidgety and uncomfortable, like sitting in front of a mirror and watching yourself make out with your hand. Or something. Blake's the wordsmith out of the two of them, he'll ask her for a better analogy at some point. That's why they're soulmates after all; they make each other the best, happiest versions of themselves. Sun just wishes everybody didn't think that meant they had to be in love.





	Of course parts of me are yours (they're the bits that say strong when I fall)

Sun has always been what his parents, with tired, affectionate eyes, would call an _energetic_ boy. Other people would band about words like _hyperactive_ or _ill-disciplined_ but no, his Dad would insist around his fifth cup of coffee, he just takes after my side of the family. Next to him Sun’s Mother would always gently rub the soft swell of her stomach and hope that maybe the next one would be a little more like _her_ side. They never get to find out _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.________  
  
Sun is four and far to young to understand words like still born or preeclampsia. Even when his parents sit him down and choke their way through an explanation he doesn’t really know any more than that he was going to get a little sister and now he’s not. His parents don’t say much more about it though. They don’t really say much of anything anymore, and if there’s one thing in this whole situation Sun does understand is that he hates the oppressive silence that now fills his home. So Sun gets louder, and brighter, and smiles wider than his cheeks feel like they can stand. He hangs from the ceiling by his tail and shouts stupid jokes to his Mother until she smiles (just a little). He learns to embody his namesake enough to drive off the shadows wrapping his family in a choke hold.  
  
His fourth year is also the year that Sun starts school, and consequently it’s also they year he meets Blake. Sun is far to young to care much for things like fate or destiny, and even as an adult he loves her far too completely to ever believe anything _made_ him do it. All he knows is that the little girl sitting across from him in the classroom is:  
  
A) wearing moon print t-shirt which is perfect because he’s Sun and he kind of wishes his Mum were here so he could tell her and  
  
B) The girl is reading the sheet of paper their teacher has left on the desk and how cool is that?! She can already read!  
  
Sun is willing to bet no one else in their class can read yet, he doesn’t know anything apart from his own name really, so as soon the teacher lets them onto the playground for the first time he goes barrelling over to the little girl and sticks this hand in her face and shouts his name like his Mum taught him. Well, maybe not _exactly_ like his Mum taught him, but this is important. It feels important. And that’s that really.

 It turns out Blake learned to read from her Father a few months ago, it’s one of the hundred Blake-related news snippets Sun relays in a breathless stream when his Mother comes to collect him that afternoon. He tells her how smart she is, and how funny, how fast she can run and that her favourite colour is purple. He tells her he was quiet for three whole minutes while Blake told him about the fairy-tale she’s reading at the moment and his Mother smiles at him in that way adults do and asks him if Blake’s his girlfriend. It won’t be that last time people ask him that but at four Sun doesn’t quite understand enough of the world, of people, to know why the suggestion makes the very bones of him shift and grind uncomfortably. Still, as it turns out he and Blake are so, so good for each other and if people don’t understand that, well, Sun figures that’s their problem.

 

When Blake gets her first serious boyfriend Sun gets sympathetic pats on the shoulder and promises she'll come around eventually. He hopes so, but not for the reasons people think. There's something monstrous in Adam Taurus. And Sun gets the feeling of suffering whenever he's around, the almost-clairvoyance of a horror he's not going to be able to protect her from. He'd sell his soul to spare her whatever's coming. Of course he would. He loves Blake. He loves her deep in his bones, beyond passion or desire, where the things that matter settle and grow strong. But this isn't a battle he can fight for her. He can't protect her from this coming storm so he watches each warning sign with a heavy heart that others mistake for jealously and prays to anything that might help that she can find a safe harbour before it's too late.  
  
The Blake he gets back isn't the one who left. The Blake from his childhood didn't wake screaming in the night to visions of a crimson painted monster or spend the waning hours of the night trembling wordlessly in his arms. He loves this Blake too of course. He'll love any and every Blake he meets until the end of him. But this isn't a Blake he wants to stay, not when she deserves so much more. Not when she could be so much happier. There are so many nights where she blames herself. Too tired to cry, too broken to feel anything else she wraps her arms around her knees and cycles through it again and again. The same guilty self-abuse that sounds too much like Adam for Sun to bear. He does it anyway.  
  
"I thought he loved me" she whispers, her voice hoarse "I thought that was love" and Sun wants to scream. He wants to shake her, make her look him in the eyes, make her listen to him.  
  
_How could you ever think that!_ He wants to yell. _How can you not understand your worth when I love you so?_ He does none of these things, they aren't what she needs right now. Instead he opts to pull her into his arms and rock them both gently, whispering that he loves her, that she's safe, against her ears and into her hair. Adam made her head a war-zone so he provides all the sanctuary he can against thoughts that are no longer her own and wishes she'd smile again soon so things would finally feel like home.

 

It's another year and a half later when Blake meets Yang, and a further three and a half days before Sun hears about her for the first time. They're away from menagerie now, the change of scenery is doing wonders for Blake, he thinks. People still ask him about them, giving him looks that range from knowing to pity when he says they're only friends. The words feel odd and clunky in his mouth, there's nothing only about his friendship with Blake, but if people can't understand their friendship he doubts they'll ever understand their kind of love. Honestly, he feels bad for them; Blake is his soulmate, his best friend and confidant, the place his soul goes to feel whole again, and these people will never have that kind of security, that kind of love. It's why he's the first person she tells about Yang.  
  
She's blushing, avoiding his eyes and repetitively straightening and releasing the springy tail of the worn monkey plushie on his bed. He sits at the opposite end of the bed, with his head tilted curiously and his eyes focused on her he looks more like a cat that she does at this moment. She doesn't say much at first, she hasn't been as talkative in general since Adam, but she wouldn't bring up any random person...  
"What's she like?" He pushes gently, his smile lop-sided and encouraging.  
  
"Sunshine" Blake whispers, breathy and almost involuntary, like she couldn't hold back that single truth. Sun's gut shifts uncomfortably because Blake has already been burned, but still there’s something in her eyes that wasn’t there before.

  
Blake takes him with her to meet Yang a few weeks later, shifting nervously between the two of them as they walk. There's an odd familiarity to Yang that makes him laugh. Sun isn't as dumb as people think, and he sees the commonalities between himself and Yang just fine. And while romance has never been a thing between him and Blake he’ll be damned if the girl doesn’t have a type when it comes to people she loves.  
  
He likes Yang, he decides. Adam looked at Blake like he wanted her, like she was his. Yang looks at Blake like she can't help herself and smiles unashamedly when Blake catches her. Blake smiles back, a little more reserved but still warm, and a moment passes between the two of them that lifts the parts of Sun that bristled around Adam. He thinks of making his excuses and catching up this evening for a good gossip. Because as hard as it is for people to believe he wants this for Blake, he truly does. He wants someone to love her as much as he does in all the ways he doesn’t. It's not a competition, love never is, and as Yang gently nudges Blake's fingers with her own; an invitation not a demand, Sun wonders if, like him, Yang too was made for Blake.  
  
He's about to open his mouth, to interrupt their moment with a fake text from Neptune and a promise to catch up later when Blake turns to look at him and his heart clenches. Her eyes are nervous and questioning. Behind her back her hand reaches out for his, seeking reassurance, and he realises with a jolt why he's here. He's not meeting a potential partner, not in the usual sense anyway, and he could kick himself for not realising sooner. Blake doesn't trust herself around Yang. She doesn't trust her own judgement any more, but she trusts his. She trusts him. Trusts him to keep her safe. And by gods he will. This time he will.  
  
Of course, Yang isn’t someone Blake needs to be kept safe from, both he and Blake have to remind them selves of that. He keeps a picture of the three of them, a surprisingly high quality selfie from a few weeks ago, printed out and framed by his bed and when Blake comes back a little late from her date or pulls her shirt collar up to hide the warm purple marks scattered along her throat he takes a slow breath and looks at the picture. He and Yang fill the frame with bright, dizzying smiles and sunshine hair while Blake settles in the middle, smaller but no less striking, with an arm wrapped around each of them and the most contented look he’s seen on her in a long time. Sun lets himself sink into the photo, into the memory, and allows their smiles to chase out the shadows the same way he’s been doing his whole life. Then he opens a group chat in his phone and messages them both.

 

He and Yang are at the doctors when it happens. It’s the last of a series of appointments Blake has been to and Sun, naturally, has been with her to every one of them so when he turns up with Yang the receptionist, usually so ecstatic to see him, gives him a funny look that mostly involves turning down every movable feature of her face and a few Sun didn’t know could move. He’s kind of impressed to be honest. Still he greets her as cheerily as usual even as her eyes dart between him and Yang, the other blonde mirroring his smile right back at her. In retrospect this was probably a lot for one woman to take in.  
  
“Hello Sun dear” she smiles but her eyes are still shifting between the two blondes “Are you here to pick up Blake? She should be out soon.” Her eyes focus on Yang suddenly and Sun doesn’t have to look at his friend to know she’s trying not to laugh. He grins as widely as he can, the same mixture of amusement and irritation is his gut as always and thanks her.  
  
“We’re going to the new zoo exhibit after this, but it doesn’t close until six, so we’ve got time.” The woman behind the desk is smiling again now and nodding at him. She gestures behind them and tells him to take a seat while they wait.

“He’s such a good boyfriend” she gushes to Yang as the head for a vacant spot in the rows of shabby sponge and plastic seating. Behind him Yang just laughs.  
  
“Are we going to have a problem?” Sun asks teasingly as Yang drops down in the adjacent seat. The foam is poking out through a rip in the plastic and she’s already fiddling with it, rolling the bits into tiny balls in a way that makes Sun wish his chair had a hole in it too. Yang grins and shits over in her chair slightly, gesturing to the tear before resuming her fiddling. Sun, who has never needed to be told twice in his live, twists at a loose sliver of sponge gleefully.  
  
"Nah, I get it." she pauses "well, maybe not entirely at first, but she loves you and you love her. It’s pretty simple really and I’m really not interested in taking away someone she loves" there's something sad and knowing in her tone, a buried weight she's grown around but never unburdened. He nods.  
  
"She's my soulmate." Yang echoes his nod.  
  
"I can see that" she's serious. He wants to smile but keeps a straight face. This is important.  
  
"We're not in love” a beat "we've never been in love." Yang nods again.  
  
"I can see that too." She says simply.

 _Yes_. Sun thinks to himself. _Yes. Yes. Yes_. Because Yang understands. Yang sees pain but doesn't push. Sees love but doesn't question. She accepts that he can love her more with each expanding particle of the universe stretching into existence and know sincerely that not once has he wondered about the press of her lips on his. He finally allows himself that smile.  
  
When they both finally look up Blake is standing there, learning against a wall and watching them with the same fond, knowing look she gets reading a book she’s finished a hundred times. Like she knows the highs and lows and loves them all for what they are. Like she knows how this end and has chosen that ending for herself.  
  
“How long have you been there?” Yang asks, a different sort of smile on her face than moments ago. Blake shrugs, still smiling.

“Only a moment, I like watching you both.” They both rise simultaneously to flank her, Yang linking her fingers with Blake’s as they head outside. The last of the clouds from the morning rain have burned off and the sunlight makes him squint as it hits him. He lets his smile relax into something softer, something more Blake like.  
  
_Yes_ he thinks _I like watching you both too _.__

**Author's Note:**

> A pretty short Blake/Yang feat. Sun drabble (I guess?) around the idea that you can love someone without ever falling in love with them. I'm really into the idea that Blake and Sun are perfect together in a way that doesn't need to be romantic, a kind of platonic soul mate au I guess. I want to write more Bumblby centric stuff in the future, but I've been out of writing for a few years now and I'm easing myself back in gently, so any comments would be greatly appreciated.


End file.
